Stealing the Atom Bomb: How Denial and Deception Armed Israel

by Roger Mattson

  Peter Wright, former assistant director of MI5 summarized the role of an intelligence officer this way: “That’s our job. If we filter out the things we believe to be true just because we can’t prove them, we’re failing in our duty.”23

  British espionage novelist John le Carre succinctly summarized the universal difference between intelligence and investigative services.24

  We are not policemen, we are spies. We do not arrest our targets. We develop them and redirect them at bigger targets. When we identify a network, we listen to it, we penetrate it and by degrees we control it. Arrests are of negative value. They destroy a precious acquisition. They send you back to the drawing board, looking for another network half as good as the one you’ve just screwed up.

  These differences were not theoretical in the case of NUMEC. The records of the affair are full of references to the difference between intelligence information and court-admissible evidence. In addition, CIA documents recently released show for certain that the Agency withheld important formation from the FBI about the intelligence information it found in Israel.

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  Cartha “Deke” DeLoach became the CIA’s liaison officer to CIA in 1948. In March 1952, he moved up FBI’s management chain and in 1963 became FBI liaison to President Lyndon Johnson. DeLoach became deputy director of FBI in 1965, the third highest position in the Bureau. Later in his career, he admitted to using information gained from wire taps on the phones of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and Robert Kennedy but denied being the one that authorized the taps, laying blame for those approvals on an FBI assistant director, William C. Sullivan, FBI’s long-time director of intelligence. When DeLoach retired in 1970 Sullivan replaced him.25 Internal FBI distribution lists for investigative information concerning NUMEC often included DeLoach and Sullivan.

  When DeLoach stepped down as FBI’s liaison officer to CIA in 1952, Sam Papich replaced him. Papich was a former football player at Northwestern University where he earned an engineering degree. He served in the liaison capacity until his acrimonious retirement in 1970 ending a long-festering disagreement with Hoover over the need for FBI to work more closely with CIA. Papich was FBI’s liaison to CIA when FBI first became involved in the NUMEC investigations and later when CIA developed its own evidence in the case.26

  Papich is credited with cultivating special relationships within CIA and FBI during his stint as FBI’s liaison officer, helping senior people overcome the animosity Hoover created. These men included Sullivan of FBI and Angleton of CIA who collaborated on many investigations, including the murders of President Kennedy, Robert Kennedy and Martin Luther King, Jr.27 Papich was on the distribution list for most of the FBI correspondence concerning NUMEC in the period 1965 to 1970.

  The names of 18 senior people appeared most frequently on FBI correspondence involving NUMEC from 1965 to 1982.28 The FBI redacted the names of the agents and special agents mentioned in reports of its investigations of NUMEC that were released to the public but not the names of the senior people who were on the distribution lists for its internal and external correspondence. The number of senior people who were informed demonstrates that the Bureau was highly interested in NUMEC throughout its various investigations. The distribution lists for the hundreds of documents in FBI files on NUMEC also show that the Bureau’s liaison with CIA was constantly informed from 1965 until at least 1974 and likely beyond, except for the period 1970 to 1973 when there was no formal liaison.

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  The FBI’s liaison with CIA came to be closely linked to James Angleton, CIA’s chief of counterintelligence. Angleton forged close ties with William Sullivan, head of FBI’s intelligence division, and the FBI liaison officers who walked the halls of CIA Headquarters in Langley, Virginia to promote effective interface between the two agencies. Richard Helms in particular praised Angleton’s liaison with FBI.29

  James J. Angleton

  CIA Counterintelligence Chief

  1954-1975

  Angleton was born in Idaho, grew up in Italy, graduated from Yale and attended Harvard Law School. He joined the Army in 1943 and OSS soon thereafter. He conducted OSS operations in England and Italy for the duration of the war and joined CIA soon after it was formed. In Italy, just after World War II, when OSS was morphing into CIA, Angleton worked with Allen Dulles to secure the cooperation of former Nazis in the struggle then aborning against the Soviets.30 Angleton was an eccentric, chain-smoking insomniac who dabbled in poetry, gemology, fly-fishing and orchid growing and harbored a healthy case of paranoia, a fitting affliction for a person in his profession.

  From his early years in CIA, Angleton managed liaison with British and Israeli intelligence, including cooperation with Mossad, Israel’s external security apparatus, and Shin Bet, Israel’s internal security apparatus. The close relationship he forged with the Israelis served America well and was one of his enduring legacies. His connection with Mossad became the route through which CIA routinely harvested inside information brought by emigrants from the Soviet Union to Israel.

  Angleton’s peers in the intelligence community held him in high regard, including Amos Manor who headed Shin Bet from 1953 to 1963. Manor was Angleton’s counterpart in some of the most successful joint projects undertaken by Israeli and American intelligence agencies.31 Angleton’s most celebrated accomplishments included his acquisition of Nikita Khrushchev’s 1956 denunciation of Joseph Stalin in a speech to the Twentieth Congress of the communist party of the Soviet Union. Angleton asked his Israeli connections to get a copy of the speech and they delivered. The copy was judged authentic by George Kennan, released to the New York Times and beamed over Radio Free Europe into the Soviet Union.32 Such Mossad-assisted intelligence coups enabled Angleton to reign supreme over CIA’s connection with Israel for the rest of his career.

  Historian Mark Riebling recounted how Sullivan and Angleton understood that the Soviets preyed on schisms between their agencies. The two of them worked hard to overcome the working level distrust bred by Hoover’s enduring animosity to all things CIA. Angleton had a phrase for the problem, “dissociation of sensibility,” which he took from “The Metaphysical Poets,” a critical essay by T. S. Eliot who used the phrase to describe the thematic dualism in literature, that is the separation of thought and feeling. Angleton called on thematic dualism to describe the tension between Hoover’s law-enforcement mentality (if you find a spy, prosecute him) and CIA’s double-agent approach (if you find a spy, put her to work for you).33

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  In February 1953, within his first month as president, former General Dwight Eisenhower elevated Allen Dulles to the post of DCI and appointed General Smith as undersecretary of state. Dulles was the fifth DCI, the first civilian to occupy that post and the longest serving (1953-1961). Unlike his predecessors, Dulles had intelligence experience before becoming DCI. As a member of OSS during World War II, he secretly negotiated the surrender of German troops in northern Italy. He also served as Berlin station chief of OSS at the end of the war.34

  Notable events on Dulles’ watch included the overthrow of leaders in Iran and Guatemala and the deployment of U-2 spy planes for secret aerial reconnaissance of America’s friends and foes. Dulles and his men lied to President Eisenhower in describing their role in masterminding the 1954 overthrow of President Arbenz in Guatemala, lies that led Richard Bissell, one of CIA’s most renowned spies, to identify the coup as a turning point. “Many of us who joined the CIA did not feel bound in the actions we took as staff members to observe all the ethical rules.” They were prepared to lie to the president.35

  There were notable failures on Dulles’ watch. On May Day 1960, the Soviets shot down a U-2 over Russia and captured the pilot, Francis Gary Powers. Although Eisenhower personally authorized U-2 flights over the Soviet Union, he denied doing so until he was caught in the act. As Tim Weiner surmised, “For the first time in the history of the United States, millions of citizens understood that their president could deceive them in the name of nati
onal security.”36

  Dulles’ biggest mistake was failing to anticipate Fidel Castro’s turn to communism. After the fact and at Eisenhower’s direction, Dulles and Richard Bissell developed a plan for a counterrevolutionary movement in Cuba to overthrow Castro. In approving the plan in March 1960, Ike told CIA he knew “of no better plan,” and he correctly predicted, “The great problem is leakage and security.” Ike cautioned, “Our hand should not show in anything that is done.” Although he was correct in discerning the risk, he erred in thinking his actions could be covered up. As he was leaving office, President Eisenhower looked back in anger at the intelligence failures of his presidency. He told Dulles, “The structure of our intelligence organization is faulty . . . I have suffered an eight-year defeat on this [and] leave a legacy of ashes.”37

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  John F. Kennedy became president in January 1961. He modified CIA’s plans for overthrowing Castro, ultimately approving a last minute scheme developed by Bissell for Cuban exiles to attack the island with only limited U.S. air support. When the April invasion faltered, Kennedy refused to order additional air support, CIA failed to exert effective control of the exile forces and the operation failed. In sixty hours, the Cuban air force killed four Alabama National Guard pilots, while the Cuban army killed 114 Cuban exiles at the Bay of Pigs and captured the remaining 1,189 invaders. The invasion was a rout.38

  A few months later, President Kennedy forced Dulles and Bissell, the invasion masterminds, out of the CIA. He named John Alex McCone to replace Dulles as DCI and Richard Helms to replace Bissell as Director of Plans. McCone was a conservative Republican, engineer, successful businessman, former undersecretary of the Air Force, and former chairman of the AEC (1958-1961). He was considered a strong manager, so his appointment signaled Kennedy’s intent to exert greater control over the intelligence community.

  McCone created a science and technology directorate in CIA and combined the aerial capabilities of CIA and DOD into a more effective national reconnaissance program. Being an outsider, he reportedly never learned of CIA’s deepest secrets, such as the illegal opening of U.S. mail and plots to assassinate Fidel Castro.39

  Two years after McCone took office, he had to deal with CIA’s failure to tell the FBI that CIA officers had observed a visit by Lee Harvey Oswald (or a double), a supposed Cuban sympathizer, to the Soviet and Cuban embassies in Mexico City only weeks before he allegedly killed President Kennedy. A 2013 CIA report written by one of its historians on the occasion of the 50th anniversary of Kennedy’s murder described how McCone, who died in 1991, “was complicit in keeping incendiary and diversionary issues off the [Warren] commission’s agenda and focusing it on what the Agency believed at the time was the ‘best truth’.”

  Although McCone had some successes (he was the first to predict Soviet intentions to place ballistic missiles with nuclear warheads in Cuba),40 he was a misfit in the Johnson Administration. After less than four years on the job, in early 1965, he decided to leave. Johnson did not try to stop him.

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  Johnson’s advisors said that Richard Helms was a logical successor to McCone but needed additional experience as deputy DCI before taking over the top spot. Thus, in April 1965, about the time that a significant amount of highly enriched uranium showed up missing from the NUMEC facility in Apollo, Johnson appointed retired Vice Admiral William F. Raborn, Jr. as DCI. Raborn had managed the Navy’s submarine-launched, nuclear-tipped Polaris missile program. Although Raborn enjoyed the trust of the president, he was a bust within CIA because he knew little or nothing about intelligence and foreign affairs.41

  Raborn’s ineptitude did not impress senior CIA staffers who soon were near mutiny. President Johnson fired him on June 30, 1966 and elevated Helms to the position of DCI. Helms proved to be one of the most competent and successful men ever to serve in that role. His tenure of six and a half-years was then second in length only to Allen Dulles. While Helms was DCI, his officers confirmed that Israel had developed nuclear weapons, and they found traces of uniquely enriched uranium in Israel that traced back to NUMEC.

  Within a few days of becoming DCI, Helms attempted to improve relations with the FBI by “making his manners” with Hoover. His driver took him from CIA’s headquarters in Langley, across the Potomac River and down Pennsylvania Avenue to the Department of Justice Building that housed the FBI. Helms intended a get-acquainted meeting, but Hoover dominated the conversation with a forty-five minute, non-stop monologue on the history of FBI in peace and war. Helms said he left the meeting with the sense that Hoover was not willing to listen to CIA’s input. The two Directors never held another personal conversation.42 Lacking leadership from the top to overcome inherent differences in mission and approach, the relationship between FBI and CIA continued to deteriorate throughout their separate investigations of NUMEC.

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  Despite their differences and their history of bad relations and missed opportunities, FBI and CIA agree on some things. For example, CIA has no law enforcement function. Rather, it collects and analyzes information to aid the formation of national security policy, and it conducts clandestine operations in foreign countries to implement national security policy. According to the rules, CIA only collects information regarding foreign countries and their citizens. Federal laws prohibit CIA from collecting information regarding “U.S. persons,” a term that includes U.S. citizens, resident aliens, legal immigrants, and U.S. corporations, regardless of where they are.

  There has been less agreement on matters arising at the interface between CIA and FBI. For example, when FBI refuses to conduct surveillance of suspected spies in the United States that CIA identifies, CIA occasionally has set up its own domestic surveillance apparatus.

  Both CIA and FBI conduct counterintelligence operations. The FBI today says it is responsible for detecting and lawfully countering actions of foreign intelligence services and organizations that employ human and technical means to gather information about the United States that adversely affects national interests. Such espionage activities involve attempts by others to acquire classified, sensitive or proprietary information from the U.S. government or from U.S. companies.

  The CIA, on the other hand, is responsible for conducting activities in foreign countries that FBI strives to detect and prevent in the United States, e.g., espionage (unnoticed theft of information) and covert action (clandestine projects, some with observable effects).43 The CIA also strives to detect in places outside the country what the intelligence services of foreign countries intend to do in the United States. Because of the interface between offshore and onshore activities, multiple handoffs occur between CIA and FBI, and functions overlap.

  As this account will show, investigations of NUMEC suffered from the inherent conflict between CIA and FBI. The two agencies disagreed about jurisdiction and methods for dealing with the reputed acts. They failed to share information gained within the United States by the FBI and inside Israel by the CIA. Most importantly, people within these agencies and other branches of government disagreed over whether America should aid, or at least ignore, Israel’s acquisition of nuclear and other advanced weapons or enforce laws that prohibit the unauthorized transfer of nuclear materials and information to third parties.

  In the NUMEC affair, the FBI functioned in its domestic law enforcement role, while the CIA, arriving later on the scene, performed its role of informing U.S. policy makers of the activities, status and intentions of Israel. The FBI used the information it gained to seek sanctions against NUMEC and its founder, Zalman Shapiro. The CIA used the information it gained overseas to inform National Intelligence Estimates it prepared for the president on the development of nuclear weapons in Israel. Poorly informed by both FBI and CIA, the AEC found itself in a quandary.

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  Hundreds of FBI documents supply most of the facts about the NUMEC affair described in this book. The Bureau has released several thousand pages of documents derived from its investigations o
f NUMEC that spanned more than 20 years. It provided these documents in response to a number of FOIA requests. The public versions of those documents contain some references to and documents from the AEC. A few contain references to the CIA. It is likely that such references and information derived from CIA sources abound in the original documents, but FBI redacted nearly all of those references at the request of the CIA. However, the distribution lists on the more significant FBI documents contain the names of FBI’s liaison officers to CIA. It is clear the two agencies communicated about NUMEC; however, much of what they said to one another has not yet been made public, except for statements by people who saw the documents before they were redacted.

  Several reasons may account for the redaction of CIA information in FBI documents. First, CIA and FBI have religiously guarded their right to protect their sources and methods. Thus, it is common to see fifty-year-old classified files, including some of those in this case, with significant portions redacted before release to the public. Second, CIA and FBI have been at odds with one another ever since Congress created CIA. Their battles over turf, role, reputation and the ear of the president are legendary. Thus, some redactions may cover up disagreements over the NUMEC affair. Third, hindsight reveals that FBI investigations of NUMEC were bizarre at best and grossly ineffective at worst. It is possible that FBI made some redactions to hide its incompetence.

  Finally, if someone in the U.S. secretly aided the transfer of nuclear weapons materials and information to Israel, then it could be argued that acknowledgement of that fact by CIA or FBI, even fifty years later, would diminish the moral authority of the United States in its ongoing efforts to prevent other countries in the Middle East from acquiring nuclear weapons and in its self-proclaimed leadership in upholding the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty. The fact that U.S. government documents are still withheld from public view, so long after they were generated, creates suspicion that they contain secrets of this sort.